


This Time, I Save You

by reginalds



Category: Spartacus Series (TV), Spartacus: Blood and Sand
Genre: Gen, His journey through the afterlife, So this is Duro's story, Tagged as 'Major Character Death', after he dies, because this is the story of what happens to Duro, but he is dead, etc. - Freeform, his deal with Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-08
Updated: 2013-07-08
Packaged: 2017-12-18 04:02:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/875393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reginalds/pseuds/reginalds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Death has, almost certainly, met a slew of younger brothers. He has, almost certainly, forced all of them to kneel before him while he played dice with their families. </p>
<p>But Duro was not born a slave, and he never learned manners. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>**Please read the notes for this story, and allow me to try to explain myself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Time, I Save You

**Author's Note:**

> Where to start? This story is something of an experiment, and I hope you'll bear with me, and give it a chance. 
> 
> I know that this story is tagged 'Major Character Death' and I would generally avoid stories tagged with anything like that like the plague, but this one is kind of different. This story begins when Duro dies, and then follows him into the Afterlife as he seeks out Death and bargains for his brothers' life. 
> 
> The story is inspired by my reading a lot of mythology. Also, Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics, and Tolkien's Silmarillion. 
> 
> I know that I haven't stuck to the way they speak in the show, or to traditional mythology, choosing instead to create my own versions of Death and the Afterlife, but, again, this is an experiment.

The sword, when it comes, burns. It hurts white-hot, like fire between his ribs and when he looks down his skin is red with blood. A lot of blood, Duro thinks hazily. His blood. 

He doesn’t remember much after that, just patches of heat at his back and sides and forehead: Agron. 

“This time,” he manages, “I save you.” 

And then for a long time everything is dark. 

He dreams, but only vaguely. Dreams that are wispy memories of sounds and shapes that float through his mind and are lost to a murky, all-encompassing dark. There is one shape that Duro clings to, like a gold coin stuck to the roof of his mouth: the hunched, grieving shape of his brother. 

He holds onto Agron’s heavy shoulders with everything he has – not his arms, but something stronger. 

And then, he wakes up. It’s dark where he is, but dry. He opens his eyes wide, but sees neither sky, nor ceiling. There’s a phantom ache between his third and fourth ribs but when he touches the place where the sword slid through the skin is cold. He feels no pain. No hunger. He waits for a long time for something to happen, but nothing does, so he stands and walks forward, hands outstretched. 

He half expects to hit some kind of wall, but his palms touch nothing, so he walks on. 

Duro walks for what feels like weeks. He never grows tired or footsore, so he continues, and as he does, the sky lightens above him, to a dusky purple. He dreams while he walks, these extended, lucid dreams that feel startlingly real. After a while, he thinks that they may be. 

In his dreams he recognizes the curve of his brother’s back, bent in grief, and his newly shorn hair. And, slowly, he recognizes the rebellion. 

The land he walks through is featureless, and it is always dusk. There is no horizon that he can see, but he knows, somehow, that he is going the right way. He is going forward, and he is going to meet someone, and he is free. 

Once, he trips over a rock, and when he picks himself up again he dreams of a man with brown eyes and a good heart. He watches him fight with and teach and begin to love his brother, and for the first time, he stops walking. 

He sits heavily on the ground and he stares at the nothing-land all around him, and he is angry. Furiously angry at what he is missing out on. He screams at nothing, digs his hands into the dry ground at his feet and curses it. 

He wants to be alive. 

He doesn’t want to be alone. 

He ends up on his back, staring at the twilit sky and the unfamiliar stars. The strange, waking dreams come again, unbidden. In them, Agron is smiling, and Agron is free, and when Duro opens his eyes his cheeks are wet and his fingers are hungry for the throat of the man he has been searching for. 

He stands, and keeps walking. His feet beat a steady tattoo on the ground and for the first time, he spots the horizon through the dusky gloom. It’s closer than he realized. He doesn’t know how he missed it before. 

There is a dark shape on the horizon that grows into three craggy mountains as Duro walks towards it. The one in the middle, he knows, is the tallest, and hollow. There is a palatial throne room in the heart of it, and Duro, born of a people who worked and loved and fought in the harsh sunshine, knows without knowing how that the man on the throne is the man he has been looking for. 

There is a cave that leads to a tunnel that leads to the throne room, and Duro finds the entrance to it at the foot of the mountain. The entrance is guarded by two men with thin faces and outstretched hands. Duro, who has nothing but himself, spits in the dust between them.

“I seek an audience with your master,” he says. “In place of gold, I offer my memories.” 

The guards look at each other silently. One of them steps forward with a greedy expression on his skeletal face and covers Duro’s eyes with a cold palm. He feels terribly, shockingly hungry when the hand is removed and he grits his teeth as he clings to a pale memory of his older brother. The guards smile at him as one, and stand aside. 

The cave is damp and Duro repeats his brothers’ name over and over so that he doesn’t forget. The cave stretches out to the backbone of the mountain and then slopes up and Duro follows it. His lungs ache, and he realizes that for the first time in a long time, he is bone-tired. 

He breathes deeper when the tunnel widens and leads him to an enormous room with a ceiling so tall it’s impossible to see, and a humble throne in the centre of it. 

Death puts on no airs. He raises his cowled head and Duro strides forward to meet him. 

Death has, almost certainly, met a slew of younger brothers. He has, almost certainly, forced all of them to kneel before him while he played dice with their families. But Duro was not born a slave, and he never learned manners. 

He strides up the dais, towers over the throne and closes his hands around Death’s throat. Death arches a slim eyebrow in a pale face and Duro growls: “Agron.” 

He shoves and Death’s skull hits the back of his throne with an impressive crack. 

“Agron,” he repeats. “My brother’s name is Agron. Swear to me that you will let him live.” 

Death laughs. “You would wish the curse of eternal life upon your brother?” 

Duro swings at him, but Death moves faster than he can react, and ducks his punch. He is still laughing, and Duro kicks out and feels an unholy sense of glee when Death trips and sprawls onto the ground in front of the throne, still smirking. 

“I don’t mean that I want him to live forever,” Duro hisses. “I mean that I want him to survive this war. I want him to be happy and to live a long life and die when he is an old man and not an instant before.” 

Death stands gracefully and folds his long, pale fingers together. “You walked all the way here to bargain for your brothers’ life,” he says, slowly. “And what will you give me in return?” 

Duro takes a deep breath; remembers he no longer needs air. “I’ll give you me.” 

“You?” 

“Surely,” Duro begins, and hopes that he’s right. “Surely you don’t want souls wandering around where you can’t control them. I’ll stay here. I’ll die properly, this time. No more walking the afterlife, looking for vengeance. I’ll stay here.” 

He blinks and when he opens his eyes again, Death is standing right in front of him. “I will stay here,” he repeats, and hopes his voice sounds braver than he feels. “And you will spare Agron, until it is his natural time to die.” 

Death grins and his teeth are white and terrible. “Agreed,” he says, and takes Duro’s hand to shake it. When they’ve finished shaking hands, Duro blinks again, and when he looks back up, Death is holding a sword. 

He smiles and Duro flinches, and everything hurts white-hot, all over again. The wound in his side burns like fire, and there is blinding, flashing pain in the palms of his hands. A dream burns his eyes: Agron, pale and bloodied, hanging on a cross. 

Duro howls. 

“We made a deal!” He yells, and Death bows and touches cold fingers to Duro’s burning temples. 

“I honour all my deals,” he says, quietly. “It’s called resurrection.” 

Another dream, one final dream, flashes before Duro’s eyes as he crumples to the ground, carrying his brothers’ wounds, along with his own. 

Agron. Agron bandaged, but alive. Fighting and gaining his freedom. Agron alive. 

Duro smiles weakly, and lets Death lay him out on a pyre that was not there a second ago. 

Everything goes dark.


End file.
